Greencastle, IN: CSX/Big Four, Lost/Monon and Lost/Pennsy Depots and B&O Caboose

Big Four: (Satellite)

Monon: (Satellite)

Pennsy: (Satellite, The Veterans Memorial Hwy reused the Pennsy RoW.)

CSX now uses the Big Four depot as a maintenance office.

Street View, Jul 2009

Monon's history is another example of when they first started building railroads in the early 1850s, they thought of the railroads as augmenting water transport. That is why this railroad, and some railroads in Ohio, started out as north/south railroads between the Great Lakes and the Ohio river. But soon, railroads replaced most of the water transportation activity, and they built east/west between the east coast and the Midwest.

Putnam County Public Library posted four images with the comment:

170 years ago,1854 marked an important year in Greencastle & Putnam County, Indiana - the arrival of the railroad later know as the MONON.

The New Albany & Salem RR started building northward in 1851 and, in cooperation with the Michigan Central RR, started building southward from Michigan City. The southbound crew reached Greencastle on March 17, 1854, and at 4pm on June 24, 1854 the north/south track crews met seven miles south of Greencastle at Putnamville to drive the last NA&S RR spike, connecting the Ohio River to the Great Lakes! 

Putnam County was not just where the last spike was set, the town of Bainbridge marked the RR line's dividing point between the hilly, difficult southern portion and the flat, easy northern portion!

After several reorganizations and added lines, the MONON Railroad became THE Indiana line, connecting FIVE universities in Indiana - Purdue, Wabash, DePauw, Indiana, and Butler.

Visit the PCPL Archives to learn more about the MONON in Putnam County!

1
1864 map of Greencastle, Indiana. (The New Albany & Salem Railroad, which built the line in 1854, had become the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago Railroad.)

2
Pulling into the Greencastle station, 1946.

3
The Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Railroad started printing "THE MONON ROUTE" on company maps in 1882. (Notice the "X" of the line's tracks crosses at its namesake - Monon, Indiana.)

4
The Monon Railroad Station on the north side of Greencastle, Indiana in 1957. Crowds await the arrival of Thomas Watson, Jr. (then president of IBM, which had a plant in Greencastle).
John Lobban: I believe that’s the Big Four train station depot, never owned or operated by the Monon RR. It was later owned by Conrail and now CSX. It’s located at the corner of N. Madison St. and Depot Street.
Tim Van Handel: John Lobban that depot needs to be saved before it's too far gone!
Russel Dove: Tim Van Handel long standing rumor, with some basis in truth, if someone requested B&B (bridges and buildings) to make repairs to a roof, repaint, etc (any line item expense on a budget), building/job would get demolished/abolished when some accountant saw it.

This topo map marks the location of all three stations. The lower NYC route went west to a quarry.

1958 Greencastle Quad @ 24,000

The Big Four depot is easy to find because it still exists. I used this aerial to find the Monon depot.

Feb 17, 1955 @ 19,000; AR1VJC000010006

And this aerial confirms that the Pennsy depot was at the end of Locust Street.

Feb 17, 1955 @ 19,000; AR1VJC000010006

I checked this view out when I spotted a caboose in a satellite image on a siding near where the Monon depot used to be. This caboose does not a appear in a Sep 2023 street view.

Street View, Sep 2022

Scott Withrow posted seven images with the comment:

Here's an interesting set of scans and photos I ran across while looking through some materials in the archive of the Putnam County Public Library. A reproduction of a small booklet promoting Greencastle, Indiana, in 1892 featured advertisements from each of the city railroads, being the Monon, Big 4, and Vandalia.

What really caught my eye was that the Monon and Big 4 ads both featured pictures of the same depot. I had noticed earlier that according to Sanborn maps, the Big 4 and Monon appeared to share a depot. I had never seen a photo of this depot until now.

They're not that great, and not that clear, but they still really excited me. Both photos are from the north side of the tracks, which is to say the Big 4 side of the depot. One shot is facing west and the other east. The large Monon freight house can be seen behind the depot in both shots. The Sanborn map seems to indicate that the freight depot was the standard Monon "run-through" type, but I've never seen photos of that structure, either, so I can't swear to it. A Sanborn map from 1907 shows that freight house as gone, replaced by a smaller combo depot/fright house which I would suspect is the Greencastle Monon depot we're all so familar with.

In any case, I really wanted to share this. Hope it's of interest.

Oh, and just for fun, I included the Vandalia ad as well.

Russell M. Schwartz: Originally, the Big Four came into Greencastle on what is now Albon Pond Road. It was relocated north of town in the early 1900s and it had its own brick station there. I didn't realize that it shared the Monon station when it used to run through town, but that would make sense. (The Monon station was still standing when I attended DePauw in the mid-70s.)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7